The Beauty That Remains

by Ashley Woodfolk

  “Jesus,” I say. “When did that happen?”

  “That’s the screwed-up thing,” Nico says. “We fought the night he died, and fuck, dude.” He looks around for his glass, and when he finds it, he downs the remains like it’s water. “It messed me up.”

  The news report said Bram was so badly beaten, they thought that was how he died at first. I’d dreamed that I was the one who’d beaten up Bram, and I’d just danced with the guy who actually did.

  “So, what? You beat the shit out of him in that locker room and left him for dead?”

  Nico blinks a few times, then furrows his brow and looks at me as if I’ve just spoken to him in another language.

  “What?” he says. “Do I look like I would win in a fight with Bram Lassiter?”

  I look at him a little closer, at his skinny arms and legs. And damn, he’s right. I run my hand through my hair. “So what the hell happened?”

  “Ugh. Look, I’ll tell you what I told the police, okay? He texted me to say he wanted to talk. It had been about three weeks since I uploaded the video, and as far as I was concerned there was nothing left to say. He was still with Yara, and I’d already gotten him back for dropping me like I was nothing.”

  Nico pours himself more whiskey, as if he needs it to get through this. I want another drink, too, but I feel like I can’t ask for the bottle right now.

  “But he shows up, and he’s all, ‘Let me fix this. I still want to be friends.’ He kept saying that. And I just said, ‘Dude, you can’t. Too late. Go make out with Yara.’ Whatever. I was pissed. He came toward me, like he wanted to hug or kiss me or something, and I don’t know. I lost it.”

  Nico looks toward the stairs, and I know how that feels, to be back at a time and place in your head and for it to be so real, like it’s happening all over again.

  “We were in the hall, right up there. I just wanted him to leave, so I was telling him to, but he kept coming toward me.” Nico starts crying again. “I shoved him, just to keep space between us. And he slipped on a pair of my fucking drumsticks, which I’d left on the floor like an idiot. He fell down about half the stairs. He was all banged up, busted lip, probably broken ribs and who knows what else, but then he started crying and saying this stuff about how his life was shit and he didn’t deserve to live. And then, I was the one apologizing, but he wouldn’t stay. He wouldn’t let me take him to the hospital to get checked out or anything.”

  I sit on the floor across from Nico, not sure what I’m feeling. I thought I knew what happened to Bram, but it seems like the more I find out, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.

  “I found out he was dead the next day. And look, I know you guys dated for forever, but you hadn’t talked to him in months,” he said. “He’s been into a lot of different drugs for a while. Recreational and prescription stuff. He was pretty depressed,” Nico says, and smiles sadistically at his feet. “It was why we got along so well.”

  I realize Nico and I…We’re the same. We got hurt by Bram, so we did something to hurt him back: Nico with the video. Me with my last words.

  I’m not expecting him to say anything else, but Nico speaks up again a minute later.

  “We were only hooking up for a month, but I think I was starting to love him.”

  “You weren’t the only one he had that effect on.”

  I get up and grab the whiskey bottle. It travels from my hands to his and back again, as if we’re preschoolers sharing blocks. We don’t have Bram, and we can’t have his forgiveness, but at least, right now, we have each other. The same dark regret is hanging over both of us; a storm cloud we can’t outrun. So, to lighten the mood, I say, “This is going to sound random as hell. But have you ever thought about joining a band?”

  * * *

  —

  When I get to Gertrude’s office, I say, “Trudy, you’re not going to believe this shit.”

  I start with the trip to Ms. Lassiter’s on her birthday. I tell her I’ve been tracking down the truth about how Bram had changed and what really happened the night he died. I mention making friends with Yara and reconnecting with Nico. But I still don’t tell her what I said to him the day we broke up. She might think I’m a fuck-up; an angry, grief-stricken kid. But she doesn’t know I’m a straight-up asshole who wished for someone’s death. I’m not ready for Gertrude to see me the way I already see myself.

  I thought she’d be into my story—especially the parts where we danced at Ms. Lassiter’s and when I confirm that I’ve been trying to cut back on my drinking—but even though she nods as I talk, and writes in her little notebook, something about her seems uncomfortable.

  “I’m glad you spoke to Ms. Lassiter again. And I’m glad you’re reaching out to some of your old friends. It’s great that you and Yara have made a connection, and it’s honestly not something I was expecting when you wouldn’t even say her name during our first session. But, Logan…you haven’t exactly been doing the work we talked about,” Gertrude says. “You know that, right?”

  I look at her. Then I look out the window. What the hell does she want from me?

  “I’m talking to all these people I never wanted to talk to,” I say to her, and she nods, agreeing with me. “People who were close to Bram, like you said.”

  “But I wonder if you’re talking to them for the right reasons. What was your intent when you went to Ms. Lassiter’s for her birthday? Were you there to try to be open with someone who was close to Bram, or were you…I don’t know, investigating? Were you using your head or your heart?”

  So maybe she does already know that I’m an asshole. I don’t answer her questions, so she tries a different angle.

  “It sounds like Bram and his mom were both having a really hard time,” she says.

  I shrug, and Gertrude shifts in her seat.

  “And what about your boyfriend? I don’t think you ever told me his name.”

  I had been staring at my shoes, but I look up at that. She’s talking about Aden.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say.

  “Oh. I’m so sorry. I thought you hung out with him all the time and that you were starting a band together?” She flips back in her notebook. “From the way you spoke about him, it seemed like you two were…close.”

  “Well, yeah,” I say. “I guess. But he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Okay, my mistake. So, have you spoken to him about how you’re feeling? About what you’ve been going through the past few weeks?”

  “You want me to tell a guy I met a month ago that my ex-boyfriend is dead and that I’m all fucked up about it?”

  Gertrude looks at me for a beat too long.

  “Is he your friend?”

  I shrug again. “I guess.”

  “Is there a reason why you don’t want to be honest with him?”

  “Secrets are safer,” I say.

  Gertrude takes her glasses off, like by having blurrier vision, she can see the real me more clearly.

  “You seem to have some guilt over Bram’s death. And I don’t know exactly why that is. Maybe you don’t either. But I think reaching out—speaking to other people who loved him, as you’ve been doing a bit, but also speaking to people who love you—can only help you process this loss. You’re allowed to be upset.”

  I must shake my head because Gertrude says, “Yes, you are. Give yourself the space to feel whatever you need to feel.”

  I don’t say anything else to Gertrude, but I’m a little worried. I may have become too used to the pain to feel it.

  BAMF // SASHA’S SENSES REVIEW…SWEET SUITE SUIT

  Looks like: The Beatles…at a gala? Idk. They’re so damn well-dressed.

  Smells like: clean laundry

  Sounds like: an eargasm

  Feels like: a warm towel when you take it fresh from the dryer. If you don’t know what that means
, I guess you’ll have to listen. And if you do know what that means, you’ll be dying to listen.

  4/5

  “My name is Shay,” I say. “And my sister, her name was Sasha.”

  Dante is sitting right beside me. We’re in a rec-center community room, and we’re surrounded by much older strangers. Turns out most twinless twins are older than sixteen. But everyone’s been really nice to me so far.

  When I first asked Dante to come to this support group with me, I thought for sure he’d say no. But when I called him after we’d been texting about sisters and what it was like to lose one, he said, “I punched my sister’s ex-boyfriend in the face, just because he was talking to Autumn. So it might be good for me too.”

  “This is my first time,” I say, “so I’ll keep it kind of short.”

  There’s a woman with curly black hair, a guy with watery brown eyes, Dante, and twelve other strangers who have lost their twins.

  “My sister, Sasha…She died in November of last year from leukemia. She’d had it since we were ten, and…even though I’d known she could die from it for five years, I’ve been having a tough time. Panic attacks and stuff like that. So my friends wanted me to talk about it—about her—with them. And I did, a little. But then my mom…she told me about this.”

  I look around at them all. I look down at Dante.

  “This is my friend. He lost his sister really recently, and talking to him made me feel a lot better because I felt like he understood even more than my other friends. So I guess I thought coming here would be a good next step.”

  The chairs were arranged in a circle, so I can see everyone at once. And they’re all nodding and smiling. Some of them have tears in their eyes, but there’s something I feel from being in this room—a kind of gut understanding. Losing a twin is like losing a leg—you forget how to stand on your own because you never needed to. Everyone in this room is missing a piece of themselves in the same unbearable, unexplainable way that I am.

  When some of the others stand to tell their stories and talk about their twins, they all say versions of that—the impossible loss I’ve been trying my hardest not to feel—like half of them is gone, like no one gets it, like their friends and family can’t stand to see them because they look so much like the person who died.

  We cry when the curly-haired lady talks about her sister having a heart attack out of nowhere, and how she’s now on medication for anxiety because she’s constantly terrified she’s going to have one and die too. We cry when the tall guy with watery brown eyes tells us how his brother was stabbed in a bar fight and how the guy who stabbed him was just released from jail early.

  I don’t expect Dante to say anything, but he stands up near the end of the meeting.

  “I’m Dante. I’m not a twin, but my sister looked a lot like me, and we weren’t even a year apart. Irish twins, some of our older relatives called us. I know it’s not the same, but…”

  We all nod. We all get it. There’s no way to measure grief; to know if mine is bigger than his. Dante probably spent way more time with Tavia than I spent with Sasha, just because she was sick for so long. I cry hardest when Dante says that he had been planning to drive Tavia to the party, but that he changed his mind to hang out with a girl and how that choice haunts him.

  We tell him it isn’t his fault; it isn’t anyone’s fault.

  I bump his shoulder when he sits back down, and he almost smiles. But there are tears in his eyes too.

  “The universe is unpredictable,” the guy leading the group says right before we leave. He makes a globe with his hands, by touching his fingertips together.

  “As much as we might think that our twins’ fates reveal something about our own, the world is too random for things to be that simple. And as much as we want to think we’re at fault or that we’re in control, we aren’t.”

  When we walk out of the rec center, the Band Wagon is parked right by the door; Rohan promised to pick me up. Dante and I walk over to the van together.

  Rohan rolls down his window and sticks his hand out to greet Dante.

  “It was really cool of you to go with her,” he says. They do a boy-hug through the window; clasped hands, hard pats on the back.

  Dante shrugs. “I’ll do anything to get out of my house, so I’m glad she invited me.” He points to the side of the van. “Still, huh?” he asks, and the name of their band almost glows in the darkness.

  Ro nods and kind of laughs. “My current band is so pissed that I won’t paint over it.”

  “You never told me that,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Pooja’s been threatening to leave Our Numbered Days if I don’t paint over it by the summer.”

  After what happened at Battle of the Bands, Rohan, Dante, and Logan started fighting constantly. The grand prize from the competition was studio time and the possibility of recording a full-length album. So I called everyone I knew to try to get them into a studio, hoping it would save them. But even once I secured them a few free studio hours and a few more at a discount, they couldn’t get along enough to record.

  Then Sasha started getting sicker, and Rohan went a little AWOL from the band because he refused to leave her side. Dante stopped caring since Rohan wasn’t around, and Logan hadn’t written anything new in a while. They never recovered, and I wonder if he keeps the band name there to hold on to what they might have been.

  Dante turns and looks back at the building. “It was weird,” he says, “just imagining doubles of all those people. But it was good. Let me know the next time you want to go.”

  On the drive home, I tell Rohan about the group, and then, once I’m home, I tell Mom, who’s already at the table with takeout when I arrive.

  “You were right,” I say. “It helped.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, I call the first BAMF staff meeting in months. Deedee shows up with chips, soda, candy, and ice cream. Callie comes with a list of all the BAMF things she’s been wanting to talk to me about, and a content calendar.

  “The archive link is broken,” Callie says. She makes a check mark on her list of concerns.

  “I think that’s something that we need to fix ASAP because we get tons of traffic through people hearing about a band and then coming to search the archive.”

  “That makes sense,” I say. I write “archive link” down in my notebook and bite into a gummy worm. It stretches out and bounces back up to my lips as I turn back to Callie.

  “What’s next?”

  “You haven’t uploaded any of the pictures from the Sunscream show yet,” Callie says.

  “I was going to do it,” Deedee pipes up. “But I know there’s a format you like, and I didn’t want it to look weird next to the other posts.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve been slacking. I know I have, but that’s the point of this meeting, right? To get back on schedule with everything.” I write down “upload sunscream photos” and “teach Deedee how to format photos.”

  “What else?”

  Callie and Deedee look at each other. Deedee gets a little misty-eyed.

  “Album reviews,” they both say.

  “We can discontinue them,” Deedee offers right away.

  “But I don’t think that would be smart,” Callie says. “From a business standpoint. I mean…People quote Sasha’s reviews. And I know you’ve been reposting them when it made sense to, and that she had a bunch we hadn’t posted yet, but we’re going to need new content really soon. Sasha didn’t review every band in the world. And, like, I know Our Numbered Days doesn’t have an album yet, but they have a ton of listens on the songs they have available to stream. Don’t you think we should have something posted about them besides that one photo?”

  Deedee nods. “It’s Ro,” she says, like I don’t know that already.

  I bi
te the insides of my cheeks. They’re right, but I’m not ready to recruit some new random person to do this. Whoever follows in Sasha’s footsteps has to love music as much as she did. And they have to have a voice that fits the tone of BAMF.

  “Let me think about that one, okay?”

  Callie starts to say something else, but Deedee noisily opens a bag of chips and asks if either of us want any.

  They hang out for a while after we finish the official BAMF business. I put on an episode of Intervention to play in the background while Deedee tells us about Olive.

  I fix the archive link. I post a couple of photos of Olive, because she’s mostly who Deedee took photos of during Sunscream’s performance. I look through all of Sasha’s most recent reviews, and when I think about her not ever writing another one, the panic bubbles up in me again. I look at my friends, who are riveted by the actual intervention part of the show and not paying much attention to me, and I try to control my breathing by myself. I think about Mom placing my hand on her throat, where I could feel the air moving in and out of her, and I place my hand on my own chest.

  Instead of running out of the room, I stay in my seat. I breathe slowly, thinking about Jerome next. There’s something comforting about his soft voice; his too-big sweaters and shiny gold rings. I think I do want more with him. Maybe.

  I focus on all the other people I love; on all the beauty that remains. I’m grateful that I still have so much left, even though Sasha’s gone. Thoughts of loud, beautiful music; banana splits; Mom and Rohan; and Callie and Deedee help me fight my way back to calm. It doesn’t work completely, but it also isn’t totally useless. My breathing evens out. The hot, bad butterflies go away. I touch my Sasha tattoo until I feel brave enough to pick up my phone.

  I text Jerome, Can we meet after school on Monday?